


to the place of the white gardenia

by meritmut



Category: Dominion (TV)
Genre: Cities and people swallowed up by good intentions seems to be a thing on this show, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-10
Updated: 2015-11-10
Packaged: 2018-04-30 22:09:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5181476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meritmut/pseuds/meritmut
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arika, Helena, and grief.</p>
            </blockquote>





	to the place of the white gardenia

**Author's Note:**

> i want the night to come  
> and lead me through an amethyst twilight  
> to the place of the white gardenia  
> there is a dull, heavy sound of clocks striking far away  
> and, in my room, darkness, emptiness, save for the ghostlike bed. — katherine mansfield

In the absence of its queen, spring has come to the kingdom.

The helicopter circles in from the southeast, allowing its pilot and passengers a breathtaking view of Helena’s green heart as dawn breaks over the hills and light creeps in over the city.

(Green heart, green arteries, green bones. Helena is lost a little more to her flora with each passing season, her walls reclaimed by trailing creepers, her rooftops by lichen and moss, everywhere unchecked growth until she seems a living city, shaped out of the earth from vine and bent bough by the hand of a more attentive god than theirs.)

The flight from Vega had been quiet, broken only by the weeping of the child Leda – and Arika’s soft-voiced yet stilted attempts to console her – but a new hush comes over the women as they look upon their home for the first time in months.

“Welcome back, my queen,” murmurs Eli from the front, before opening the radio channel to the control tower and beginning their descent towards the Lady College helipad. Arika keeps one arm about Leda and her gaze upon the city, and the swathes of sunlit green that rise up to meet them like waves rolling in off the sea.

-

She was not always so wild, this city, nor so flush with life. The gardens had been one of the last things Arika had turned her mind towards, when the more urgent concerns of her fledgling kingdom had been attended to - since the beginning it has been her way to stay involved in the planning and development at the core of Helena’s expansion, and over the years she has taken a keener interest in some projects than others. While the construction teams laboured and the medical staff worked themselves to exhaustion to provide the bare bones of housing and healthcare for the refugees flooding into La Jolla, Arika had personally overseen the installation of enormous greenhouses and irrigated allotments, and organised the preservation of thousands of seed samples in great freezers below ground to ensure no one in her care will starve, should their access to the world outside be cut off.

And eventually (in no small measure at Uriel’s urging) the young queen had enlisted some of her best and brightest in the design of a sprawling garden, giving over the unoccupied space at the city’s heart and putting half a dozen of her most creative minds to the undertaking. The results are a verdant feat of civic planning that impress Arika to this day, function and artistry twinned in a marvel of botanical ingenuity.

(No part of Helena is off-limits to its queen, but its gardens are her favourite place by far.)

Unlike the hothouses and the grain stores that support the city’s population, and the vast subterranean seed banks beneath the Lady College, anyone who wishes to may visit the gardens of Helena – and unlike the facilities at the core of her agricultural infrastructure, they have a less than strictly utilitarian purpose.

Winding and sloping their way down from the College into the city proper, neatly-edged lawns give way to artificial streams and copses of young trees to orchards flush with life and fruit; to miniature woodlands and meditative spaces in full flower to entire buildings enclosed by greenery, and beds upon beds sown with all manner of medicinal plants and herbs.

(Those species of a more malign nature lie in a garden all their own, kept behind a locked gate for safety. Helena is the last centre of botanical knowledge left in North America and her scientists are no more reckless with their treasures than they are the lives of their children: though all citizens receive some education in the curative properties of common flora, and it takes only a little further training in order to be granted access to the garden of poisons, most are content to keep the gate between themselves and its toxic inhabitants.)

The rest of Helena has long been allowed to recede into the inexorable grasp of the wilderness, so the diligence with which the gardens are maintained might seem to some a little contradictory while the city itself sinks back into greenery like bones into the forest floor.

Yet while her streets are indeed overwhelmingly green, the gardens are awash in colour. There are ornamental flowerbeds too; crammed with roses and geraniums and hibiscus and tulips, gardenia and dahlia and lavender and lilac, desert sage and untamed rhododendrons creeping ever outward – and more, scores more, forming lush ribbons of colour amidst the green and painting the space from above in all the shades of sunset; in gold and saffron and scarlet, cream and violet and tangerine and white and pink, pink as far as the eye can see.

From the air the colours smear and blur, indistinct, vivid.

Like rivers, Arika has often thought, if rivers ran with jewels.

The queen is known to be partial to a breed of pale orange rose, which blooms in late summer months and carries the faintest scent of lemon in its flowers. She cuts them herself, every year without fail, and fills her suite with the choicest growth of the season until their perfume permeates the entire upper floor of the College with a sweetness reminiscent of sherbet.

Uriel prefers the fat Turkish roses that grow wild, pink and fragrant in the west of the garden. She had flown the cuttings over the ocean herself, having decided nothing could match up to the real thing (and revealed herself to be as much a snob with flowers as she is with art, Arika had teased), and at her wish the borders beneath her windows had been given over entirely to the breed.

She had saved some of the cuttings for potting in her rooms, the one place in Helena she is permitted solitude – and where she no longer needs to pretend to be less than she is. She would emerge of a morning so sweet-smelling that Arika had once wondered aloud if she bathed in the stuff, but it was only the lingering fragrance of the oil on her white skin.

Her wings, too. Uriel had loved nothing better than for Arika to dab rose oil into her feathers to keep them soft and gleaming, to draw her fingers through those great and powerful pinions as tenderly as she would through the archangel’s hair. Arika would catch their scent on her own palms for days afterward, light and elusive as a dream on the edge of memory put to flight by the rising of the sun.

It is a scent that she has come to associate with Uriel, with the warmth of her arms and the fall of her cornsilk hair, and the great shadow of her wings unfurled like thunderclouds overhead.

 _Plant them on my grave,_ she had murmured once, _when I am dead._

Arika had kissed the morbidity from her mouth, uneasy at the notion Uriel’s words might carry something prescient.

 _Sweet thing, you are light itself,_ she had replied with an edge of amusement, _and I am only earth. You will be the one planting flowers for me, I think._

The roses had grown more glorious with each year, and Arika had continued to oversee the expansion of the garden.

When it was complete, she named it Eden, and opened it to all.

-

Helena has grown wilder in recent years, as though she would burst her seams and overflow the walls that keep her safe.

To the world beyond those walls she is the subject of speculation and rumour and misinformation, an enduring conundrum to be wondered and gossiped about by those with the inclination (and the time) to do so. Kernels of truth escape the city now and then, but the gulf between fact and fiction grows a little wider with each seed of myth and half-truth that makes it out to take root in the imagination of the outside world.

These lapses in security are not usually accidental. It is the opinion of the queen, and one in which she is far from alone, that the rest of the Cradle are quite at liberty to believe what they will.

(If anyone in the world beyond Helena should pause to wonder why, when so little else about the near-mythical City of Women should emerge as solid fact, the glimpses that do make it through her walls seem to paint such a coherently uninformative picture of the stronghold, it seems her neighbours have yet to surmise that these fragmentary truths and outright lies could manage to make it out only because Queen Evelyn intends them to.)

So Vega and Delphi may believe themselves – if not knowledgeable, then at least _informed_ – where Helena’s ways and customs are concerned. They may believe that the enigmatic Evelyn rules over a stern matriarchy of bellicose women and cowed men subdued by the mandates of an oceanic goddess-cult, and if it feeds an underlying perception of Helena’s citizens as superstitious, cloistered and backwards to the point of primitive, it also upholds a certain useful trend towards underestimation in her allies and her rivals both.

Add in the rumour of a fully-functioning air force, and the city has been left to its own devices – by the fellow human settlements of the Cradle, at least – for nigh on two decades.

Queen Evelyn can accept some less than charitable whispers, if it means things stay that way.

-

The queen’s suite is empty, undisturbed since she left for Vega. The return to Helena had been somewhat unscheduled and there has not been time for anyone to clean, but Arika finds a strange sort of comfort in the untroubled stillness of her home, the quiescent light of a blue-grey dawn seeping in through the closed curtains, everything as she had left it months ago.

These are Evelyn’s rooms: this is Evelyn’s palace, in all but name. Arika wonders if anyone still believes the woman exists.

She wonders when she stopped.

Slowly her feet carry her towards the bed as the adrenaline that had kept her upright thus far begins to fade, a bone-deep weariness settling over her instead and turning each step into a struggle. Her shoulders slump, her eyes drifting shut while half a room yet keeps her from her bed – her bed, she has not slept in a real bed since she was thrown in Vega’s cell block – and in the morning she must discover the fate of that ill-starred city. She must face the reality of its loss, and the very real possibility of the war spilling over to her corner of the Cradle.

And...she must face her own losses, face the many griefs she has until now locked away along with the softness and the tenderness this war has cost her.

A city awaits her command and her judgement and another week may see the massed might of Vega and New Delphi assembled at her gates for a battle Helena is not equipped to fight.

She cannot face any of it without a few hours’ sleep.

-

If she dreams at all, she does not recall it.

-

She is granted the morning to rest, and no doubt even that is generous of her staff, but at noon when Arika is woken by a sharp knock at the bedroom door, the harsh report of practised knuckles against wood is calculated to shake the sleep from weary bones as effectively as a slap to the face.

Staggering upright, Arika manages to get the floor under her feet again and lurch halfway across the room before her brain has even registered the movement.

(That knock has roused her every morning for more than a decade. Some habits never die.)

When she opens the door to find her chief of staff hovering patiently outside, Arika knows immediately there has been news from Vega.

“Miriam,” she says, and steels herself for what is to come.

-

There are, among the higher offices of Helena, a number of her servants whose privilege it is to keep the secret of their elusive monarch's identity. That the truth may be less a secret than an unspoken fact of life these days does not lessen that privilege (nor the _necessity_ , at least where the city's neighbours are concerned) but Arika has always felt it to be to Miriam’s eternal credit that, when she herself was inducted into that number, she’d had the grace to not even bother acting surprised. 

It showed, the queen had thought, a rather commendable degree of common sense on her part, and while Arika’s entourage played guests and prisoners by turns to House Riesen, it had fallen to Miriam and her flock of aides to keep the affairs of Helena running smoothly.

Only a few years older than the war itself, her youth belied by an even temper and admirably level-headed approach to what is, essentially, the second most powerful position in the city, Miriam nevertheless looks both relieved and utterly apprehensive as she greets Arika at the door. She had been among the party to meet the helicopter and - having being called abruptly from her bed - had looked about as rough as Arika had felt, weary-eyed and haggard despite the joy clear in her face to have her queen home. She’s collected herself somewhat in the hours since, donned a dark haika and taken up her habitual armful of paperwork, as well as a mug of citrus tea, which she promptly hands over.

“It is well we have you back,” Miriam says without preamble, her facial muscles struggling valiantly to arrange themselves in an approximation of a smile. Possibly. It's difficult to say for sure: any effort towards an expression of genuine delight is roundly thwarted by the tension and stress etching premature lines around her mouth. "Our lost sisters are named in all the prayers today,” she continues, “but...we’ve had word, my queen, from Vega. It’s…” she looks momentarily lost as she searches for the words, consults the report she grips with taut-skinned knuckles, “...it’s not good.”

“Tell me,” says Arika softly, cradling the mug in both hands. ‘Not good’ is nothing new, where their sister-city is concerned, and this is no longer a world in which _no news is good news_ rings with any truth. Should Vega fall silent, she thinks, then they will have cause to fear.

Miriam nods. “Aerial recon shows it is much as you said: possessed within the walls, chaos on the streets. The city is in meltdown. You were fortunate to escape, my queen, but we’ve yet to ascertain who else – and how many – survived the night. Also to be confirmed are reports of possessed targeting the reactor core, and that several of the V6 residences have been burnt out. The death toll cannot yet be estimated.” Again the look of apprehension crosses her face. She dances around something, and Arika’s heart thuds painfully in her chest as she begins to suspect what it might be.

“We intercepted a few radio transmissions, too,” Miriam goes on at last, her brow furrowing unhappily, “there’s someone still communicating with the forces on the ground. Possibly from Delphi. Recon shows no activity in the immediate surroundings of the city.”

Arika sighs. “Get to it, please.”

Miriam’s lips are a thin line. Her veil is pushed back, exposing the line of her throat and the tightness in her delicate jaw.

“The archangel Gabriel took command of Delphi’s forces. He and his brother were briefly seen in the city shortly after dawn, but are currently unaccounted for. The-”

“Miriam.”

The younger woman swallows, tucks a dark braid behind one ear and grips the edge of her notes.

“One transmission...unconfirmed, but thus far unrefuted...my queen, they’re saying the Lady of the City fell in battle. Claire Riesen is dead.”

-

The night before they were due to leave, Arika and her immortal consort had passed a quiet evening on a terrace overlooking the ocean. The air hung heady with the scent of rose and honeysuckle, and a salt-laced sharpness borne inland on the breeze.

Uriel had perched upon the low wall, a soft-edged vision in the fading light. She had been barefoot, Arika recalls, her slender ankles crossed below the hem of a haika the colour of wine, her white limbs flushed roseate by the light. In one hand a glass dangled lazily, perilously close to slipping. The other had been bent in a slow summons towards her lover, beckoning her close.

The angel’s fingers had smelled of oranges, Arika remembers. Her mouth had been sweet with the taste of them.

 _You’ve been raiding the greenhouses again,_ she had teased. Oranges wouldn’t be available on their tables for weeks yet. Not that that ever stopped Uriel. The archangel was not one who seemed accustomed to being told _no_ , after all: she had merely shrugged, a slow smile curving her red lips against Arika’s.

 _We’ll be in Vega tomorrow,_ she’d offered by way of an excuse for her insatiable sweet tooth. _Who knows what they eat there? Grain and gourds, I hear. It might be weeks before I taste anything sweet again._

 _Only if you misbehave._ Arika’s smile had matched Uriel’s for a moment. It faded swiftly at the thought of the following day, and she grew solemn. _I don’t intend to linger long. There’s no reason we need stay once our business is concluded._

 _I am glad to hear it._

 _

Hmm. And be on your guard, love. We have no true friends in Vega.

_

-

For a moment, the world stops turning.

Arika is not so fortunate.

_Claire -_

Beneath her feet the ground tips, the floor shifting and rolling as though it would shake her clear off. It is as if the earth itself strains against its axis, as if it might by the hand of some great celestial mechanic turn in upon its own orbit, wind back time and undo what has been done.

The strength is gone from her limbs. Arika sags sideways against the doorframe and tries to pretend it’s not because her legs can no longer support her weight, hearing beneath the rushing noise in her ears the sound of files clattering to the floor and registering dimly an awareness of Miriam, reaching out with warm hands and calling her name.

_…oh, Claire…_

She oughtn't be so shaken by the news, when their parting had been so very final. To go storming into the lion's den as Claire had done…there were few other ways it could have ended, and Arika oughtn't feel the grief of it like a cold weight in the very pit of her heart.

She oughtn’t feel it so deeply that her first instinct is to seal it away, in the place where she seals away all hurts like it because Evelyn of Helena, queen of a kingdom falling slowly into decay, cannot afford such luxuries as sorrow. She oughtn't mourn – not when Vega is on its knees at the brink of succumbing to a far more immediate calamity, its leaders lost and its walls broken, and this is the outcome she had _hoped_ for once not so very long ago. But the words are spoken, the tragedy pronounced, and if there is no certainty in young Miriam’s address then there is no doubt either.

Arika does not doubt. Claire had not meant to live, Arika had known that from the moment she'd looked into her eyes and seen there the fierce and wretched hate of a daughter and a mother and a princess stripped of all the things that made her any of it, and yet beneath – the glint of courage as true as steel.

She had known their last goodbye to be just that, the last – and more, that Claire had known it too. David might have believed the Riesen name would protect the Lady of Vega but even after everything the man has endured he still refuses to see that whatever rules they all once lived by are no longer the rules by which the world operates. Arika is not entirely sure there even are rules, anymore, but if there are, they are clearly not meant for humankind to comprehend.

The odds have been stacked against them from the start, and Claire had walked to her fate in the full knowledge of the unlikelihood of her walking away from it.

That terrible understanding had been there in her eyes and still she had gone, still she had met the end with all the courage and defiance Arika had come to respect in her.

(Courage and defiance – and a knife in her boot. Claire had been armed, oh, she had been spoiling for a fight there at the last, and that had been there in her eyes too. The same will that Arika had gone up against so many times in Edward had shown itself there and true in his daughter, a battle-spirit as implacable as iron as she went not to demand fruitless terms on behalf of her people, but to defend them with her life and the last act of defiance permitted to her.)

Claire has – _had_ – given her life to Vega. She had always been ready to give more.

This is not a world that would settle for less.

_You thought it yourself, the first time you clapped eyes on her. You looked at her and you thought, this is a woman who will kill for Vega. This is a woman who will die for it._

No quiet passing could ever be enough for one with the blood of a leader hot in her veins. No ignominious end could suffice for one so meant for martyrdom as Claire. She had died as she’d lived, and Arika cannot imagine it any other way.

_It is only right, only fitting._

Truthfully, she cannot yet imagine it at all.

“My queen?” Miriam’s voice carries a touch of pleading now. “I’m sorry, we need you in the war room. I’ll have food and coffee brought to you there.”

She departs with all and merciful haste, leaving Arika alone with a spinning head and the suffocating press of grief beneath her sternum.

Slowly she turns to look back towards her bed, warm and welcoming and foreboding as a bier all at once in the sepulchral half-light, and as she makes to move across the room to her closet something catches her eye. Something that had, she is almost certain, not been there when she had fallen into bed at dawn.

The sheets are barely disturbed, so deeply has she slept these six hours, and the left-hand pillow is as smooth as it was before. As it has been for too many nights now. The other is rumpled with the indentation of her head.

Upon the table beside it, as full and dewy as though it had been picked only moments ago, lies a single pink rose.

A soft moan escapes her, torn from somewhere deep within that _hurts_ , now, with a fierceness that takes her breath away. Arika claps a hand to her mouth, her back bowing under the weight of sorrow, and lets her hand find the edge of her dresser to keep her upright.

She will not fall, not yet. All still waits. And...

 _Let them wait._ She is required at her war table, required to attend to duties left in others' hands for months now, and yet - she would take a moment more, and hopes they will not begrudge her it. She can be herself again presently, be the queen they need and the queen she had promised to be when Helena was young and she was too; can be as proud and strong and fearless and ruthless as is demanded of her while the city is threatened.

She can put these useless griefs away for later and face the oncoming storm with laughter if they wish it of her, if they will only forgive her a moment now to weep.

**Author's Note:**

> Approximately 89% sadder and gayer than intended, but that's always the way innit.


End file.
